The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs

In some ways, A.J. Jacobs and I are from the same cloth. We both enjoy taking on projects for limited periods of time, allowing them to seep into our souls. This project is one such idea. Granted, I have never done anything nearly as ridiculous and interesting as the experiments Jacobs does with his life. Trying to outsource your life, living a year based on the literal translation of the Bible, and reading the entire encyclopedia are unique and etravagent experiments (although I have thought about reading the entire Encyclopedia Judaica). During each of his experiments, Jacobs changes one thing about his life, seeing how it changes his time and in turn changes him. Spending a month living like George Washington allowed him to see things from a more polite and regal point of view, and spending a month listening to every whim of his wife showed him how much time is wasted bickering and overthinking. He does not go into the experiments with expectations as to what he will see but allows the difference in his life to show itself. In some ways, this is precisely what can be so powerful about the writing experience. Writing allows you to think through your own thoughts as you try to immortalize them on paper. Jacobs particularly has a self-reflective nature of writing, as he is self-aware of his own ridiculousness.

                  I think there is a lot to learn from these type of experiments. One, making changes in our actions effects our feelings and changes us, for good or bad. Two, only by making a change does one understand what was happening beforehand. That jolt helps us see what was occurring all along, a broader version of “you’re gunna miss me when I’m gone”. 

                  For those religiously inclined, it seems that these two lessons are a main part of the High Holidays and the days in between. The focus on the Shofar as a sounding to wake us up from our slumber reminds us to not live our lives the same way we have by rote. We must be physically shaken in order to achieve this affirmation, extra prayers are not enough. During the intermittent days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur we are told to live this week like we would want to live the year, using each day of the week as a model for the next 51 times they come up in the calendar. In essence, this is an experiment. It is an experiment of living your religious life the way you would in an ideal world as a way of waking up your soul. Other holidays have this as well. On Passover, we experience what it was like to leave Egypt as slaves, and on Shavuot we stay up studying all night, experiencing what it was like to receive G-d’s command. These experiences inculcate the values that are inherent in them. Jacob’s method is a Jewish one (he is Jewish after all-classic) of learning and understanding through experience. May we all have the experience we are looking for these next couple of days and weeks.

Story by Robert Mckee

Story has changed the way I look at books, movies and communication in general. Using examples from a variety of genres and mediums Mckee goes through the building blocks of story. He does more than explain the structure but speaks to the ebb and flow necessary to make a story interesting and meaningful. Some points stuck out to me.

   1. Story is the backbone of society. It is more than entertainment but how we communicate with each other. How we tell it, frame it and explicate it is integral to our worldview.

  2. Every character must have a struggle (protagonist may/should have more than one) that you go back and forth between throughout the book. Each scene must be there to put on display a part of that struggle for the character. The reader needs the character to be complex, to almost feel like they are reading about a real person with whom they can share in their hopes and dreams. Scenes that elucidate plot without vacillating between sides of the conflict inside the characters will become boring and tedious. On a value level, this structure turns a plot into an understanding of a human experience as we watch a complex character go through an extreme situation.

     
     3. Stories don’t write themselves. An outline is so important not just for knowing where you are going but for seeing in front of you how your chosen values are being looked upon at different points and how they are progressing. It allows for concentration on what the book is actually about, and not a focus on what will happen next.

   While reading the book I noticed how this concept of story being so vital is extraordinarily far reaching. I first noticed this while on ESPN.com which is supposed to be a news website about sports, but it isn’t. Here is a screenshot of the top stories on the website as I am writing this (I could have chosen any time at all, now happens to be Friday at noon). 

Notice how only one, maybe 1.5 headlines, out of the 11, are actually about sports. “Worldwide leader in sports”, more like “Worldwide leader in stories related to sports”. The rest are stories that capture imagination and clicks. I don’t mean to pick on ESPN. 

     Here’s the headlines of si.com. They do somewhat better, but its still mostly stories that are interesting but not sports. In the book, Mckfee writes how hard it is to make people care about your story. We see so many every day that they blend together. Making something new, that is worth reading is incredibly difficult. ESPN and SI go to lengths to get away from the actual games because nothing in them is new and exciting. So many games have been played in the past that it makes it difficult to spin them. When they finally get an exciting one, it is beaten to death. Tim Tebow and Michael Sam are just two recent examples.

I was curious if this could be true in news reporting as well. I looked through all the stories the NYT has done on the Israel-Gaza conflict (found here), and thought: “What is the best, most interesting story that could have been written on this topic?” It held true. The take was almost always the more interesting one, the one that held your attention more. In some ways this is unsurprising. In order to get readership, you must choose topics they are interested in. If articles on Israel will get more attention it would behoove a paper financially to focus more attention onto it. What I am referring to here though is choosing which side to focus on within the topic. If the NYT has a clear bias, it’s a story bias. I don’t know what the answer to that is.

Things to think about.